Demons
by liliaeth
Summary: Buffy faces her demons


Title: Demons  
Author: Lore  
Rating: barely Adult  
Summary: Buffy faces her demons  
  
  
Sunlight danced over her eyelids, teasing her with a gracious warmth and the pain of looking straight into the light. Her back itched and she could feel something slithering across her ankle. Considering she'd fallen asleep next to Spike last night, considering that he'd carried her over to his bed afterwards, considering that Spike's not quite cold feel was all gentle and caring, the slimy touch of whatever was crawling over her leg, was neither expected nor desired. She got up rather briskly, something grabbed a hold of her hair. She had to force down a scream as it held her back. She grabbed for it and startled up as she noticed she'd just killed a tree, and not even a big one.   
  
Oh God!  
  
Had Spike finally decided he had enough, had he thrown her out of his crypt? And didn't he have a right to do so. Well ... No he didn't have any right. He was a vampire and ... And that still didn't excuse her from using him, but she just couldn't say no.  
  
No, she couldn't think of that. Spike was just a vampire and an annoying one at that. He was stupid and snarky and it was wrong to see him as a person because ... because no matter how much he had those annoying quirks and stupid looks in his eyes, that still didn't make him a person. It still didn't make him human. He was just a killer and this whole sex thing was just plain wrong. It was something she should have put a stop to right away, after his first touch, their first kiss, their, no, it should never have started. If only he didn't feel so good. So unimaginably good.   
  
And where were her clothes?  
  
Buffy tried to cover herself up, looking for a shred to hide behind. What if someone saw her? What if some demon saw her? She didn't even have weapons. She quickly grabbed the branch she'd pulled down and held it as a meager attempt at protection. What kind she wasn't sure of.  
  
She swallowed deeply and forced herself to move on, knowing she couldn't stay where she were. It was still dark and there was the tiniest shimmer of a chance that she might find something, anything to wear. Right now anything would be an improvement. Even one of those stupid Double Meat uniforms.   
  
Her feet hurt from walking on tweaks and little stones kept cutting in between her toes. She couldn't even help running into overhanging branches that kept getting tangled up in her hair, making a mess of it. Spike was so going to pay for this!  
  
There was a small cottage right in front of her. White flowers surrounded the path up to the door and Buffy could see a lonely scarecrow ruling the fields. It was wearing a rag so torn she couldn't make out what it had been. She felt almost guilty, unwilling to face the scarecrow as she took the rag and the rope, binding it around her. She walked up the path to the house, her feet pacing the white cobblestones. She balanced herself on her toes, staring through the window.   
  
A woman was tending to a vase filled with a variety of flowers. Rearranging them softly while whistling a lullaby. The woman was old and frail, her rimply fingers slowly brushed past the petals, caressing them. Buffy planted her hand on the glass, forming an imprint in the morning damp. Something approached the woman. Something dark and green and scaly. Buffy nearly froze as she saw it lift the old woman's hair, taking a lock in its huge paw, its fangs moving to the neck. Its tongue moving past the liver spots.  
  
Buffy just reacted, kicked the door open. The demon stared up, its eyes flashed red and spikes formed all over its skin. Breaking wildly through the overall the thing was wearing. She attacked it with her branch. It broke of. He hit her down, away to the door where she noticed an old knife lying around. She picked it up and rolled back into a fighting stance. The demon tried to fight her but it didn't stand a chance. Something grabbed her arm and Buffy didn't even turn back to look at what she'd hit.  
  
"Please no, don't kill him."  
The old voice sounded pained. Buffy stared at the woman, terrified eyes glancing in between her and the monster.  
  
For the first time Buffy noticed the demon had been trying to force her out, away from the woman, protecting her.  
  
"Please, don't kill my husband. Don't take him away from me."  
  
Her husband. It ... he ... No!  
Buffy dropped the knife and broke out trembling. What had she done? He hadn't been trying to hurt the woman, in contrary.  
  
She dropped the knife. Another innocent. Not a human like Katrina, but still an innocent and she'd almost killed him just because she'd attacked before thinking.   
  
She backed of, unsure what to do or say, how to apologize.   
What was happening to her?  
Had things gone so far from being a simple black and white?   
Demons bad, humans good.   
But humans could kill, they could kill all too easily and here she was, nearly killing someone, a person for nothing more than the way he looked.   
  
Whatever had happened to her plain and simple world?  
  
Spike had happened of course.   
With his offer to help her save the world, with his smile and eyes looking at her as if she meant the world to him. A sick obsession at first, but God... so much more in the end.  
  
Buffy crumbled, her entire body shaking under her sobs.  
The demon loomed over her. His talons were sharp, he could kill her in a second if he wanted to, and instead he picked her up and helped her to a chair, setting her down with a gentleness belying his size.   
  
He brushed through her hair, grunting barely understandable yet comforting nothings at her as his wife brought a cup of tea, offering it to her with the merest semblance of a smile on its green face.  
  
Buffy stared up at the laced handkerchief that looked so funny in the demons paws. The demon with eyes of the purest blue she'd ever seen other than in Spike. She pulled the cloth closer over her and wiped of the tears with the handkerchief, desperate to ignore any wandering thoughts on the damn vampire.  
  
"What's your name little one?"  
  
He sounded so much like her grandfather now. Grandpa Grey had also called her little one, just like the demon did now. He'd touched her just like that, brushing through her hair and wiped her tears with a brush of a finger.   
  
"Buffy. I'm Buffy."  
  
But there was no pride in her voice this time, no righteous anger, or a deep innate knowledge of being in the right. It was merely a shy whisper of her old self in total break down.  
He surprised her once again, taking her hand in his own and shaking it softly.  
  
"Nice to meet you Buffy. I am Kreviak."   
  
Buffy looked down at her hands, covered in filth, crawling under her nails like the dirt of her grave, like the wood splinters of her coffin.   
  
"I'm sorry," she finally managed to mutter. Just one word but the weight of the world in trying to say it. Yet she couldn't find the force to make herself get up and run away from him, from them.  
  
They didn't ask her what had happened to her clothing, or why she'd come here to their cottage. Instead they just offered kindness. Elise slowly placed down a dress of her own for Buffy to wear as Kreviak filled the bathtub. He'd heated a huge kettle of water before pouring it in the tub, dipping in a single scaled finger as if to feel it for the proper warmth before leaving the room. Buffy leaned down in the bath, letting her body sink under the surface of the water, ridding herself of the dirt and grime, but not of the guilt.  
  
She'd nearly killed an innocent.  
  
How many times had she faced demons without even the barest shred of knowing what they were? How many had she killed plainly on a presumption of evil? Admittedly, most of her kills were evil and made quite sure she knew that, but what about the others ... The ones that had just ran on seeing her, the ones she'd staked in the back or the ones whom she'd interrupted as they tried to say something.  
  
What about their fear as they ran on seeing her, their terror?  
  
How many had she actually given a chance?  
But if she had, how many of those mercies would have come back to haunt her amongst her own world, her own people. And in which world did she really belong now?  
  
A Slayer, a killer as Dracula had called her, standing with one feet in the darkness and the other barely holding on to the realm of reality, tied to friends who'd betrayed her more than she could ever imagine and a single blond vampire with a big mouth and the sweetest tongue ...   
  
Bad Buffy, she couldn't think of Spike now or the way his hands touched her, brushing over her breasts, like the strokes of a painter touching the canvas on which to paint his masterwork.   
  
She could feel the warm water lifting her, shifting between her legs, so fluid, so hard to grab on to. Filling her as she opened up to it. Like she opened up to Spike and to his hardness entering her. Going all warm at the idea of him pulling her up, looking into her eyes as he made her come again and again and....  
  
It was all so wrong; yet it felt so right, so sickly right.  
  
It was the only thing still right in her world and that was wrong. More wrong even than just the idea of having sex with a thing that should be her mortal enemy. It was better to put a label on him. He's evil; he's just a thing, just a filthy dirty thing that's getting his rocks of. There's nothing wrong with using a filthy thing. Things didn't feel, they didn't have emotions to hurt.   
  
And why again was she feeling guilty?  
  
Elise had put some towels on a chair for her. Buffy dried herself off and pulled her body in the long blue dress that Elise had given her. It was all lace and brocade. Nice and comforting on her skin, even as she could barely feel the warmth of the room. Kreviak was cooking in the room next door and Buffy sat down shyly, refusing to look at him, her hands folded in her lap.   
  
"Come on little thing. A bit of soup will heat you right up."   
  
Buffy grasped the cup in her hands and brought it to her mouth, trying not to meet the demons eyes.   
  
"You shouldn't help me." Buffy muttered, a fake anger behind her voice.  
  
"I'm the Slayer, the Vampire Slayer. I should be killing nasties, not letting them serve me soup or ... Oh God I'm gonna be sick."   
  
The demon didn't seem struck by her words, his kind eyes just stayed on her, gently taking her in, waiting for her to go on.   
  
"Didn't you hear me? I'm the Slayer. I kill demons."  
  
"Yes Little one. I heard you the first time."   
  
Buffy brought another spoon to her lips, letting it slip in slowly, retaining the silence for as long as could possibly make it last. Anything to avoid the talk.  
  
But the silence grew hard as it was clear that Kreviak and Elise were waiting for her to say the first words. It wasn't demanding, just a certainty that she would have to take the first step.  
  
"Where am I?"  
  
Kreviak creaked his neck for a second, giving her a questioning glance.  
"The Valley of the Sun, where else?"  
  
Of course even in this weirdness she couldn't leave Sunnydale.  
"But where in Sunnydale?"  
Kreviak just lifted his shoulders. He didn't seem to get the question.   
"Just the Valley of the Sun."  
  
"No, I mean ... I ... one moment I'm falling asleep next to Spike, feeling his cold hand on me, shivering as his dead lips touch mine." She qualmed up again. "Then I'm in the woods, naked. Cold all over."  
  
"Spike, he is your mate? A demon mate?"  
  
"Yes. No! No way, no ... he's just ...   
I hate him ... I love him. I ... I used to know what I felt, now I'm not even sure of myself anymore. So how can I be sure of him?  
If I don't even know what I feel, what I want, what I think ..."  
  
"One of those then?"  
Buffy blushed at Elise's knowing smile.  
"I remember my feelings after meeting Kreviak. He frightened me. My feelings for him, they weren't right. But still I couldn't deny them."  
  
Buffy nodded, seeing the love in her eyes as she looked up to her husband, as he brushed his hand on her shoulder for a second before sitting down next to her. They just seemed so right together.   
  
"But Kreviak is a good demon. Spike he's ... He's a monster, a killer, a vampire."  
  
Kreviak put down his cup and brought his hand to his chin.  
"Vampires ... nasty things they are."  
  
"Spike isn't nasty!"  
Buffy grabbed for her mouth, as if to stop her words.  
"He's gentle, caring. He loves me and protects me. He's always there for me, even when I want him gone. He listens to me, let me be with him, when I just wanted to feel safe, alone, with him there to hold all the world at bay. I used him for all that and more and he let me." Her voice broke. "I used him, and he never even complained.  
God, the only monster ... the only heartless foul creature ... is me.  
How could I be so cruel to him?"  
  
The old woman took Buffy's hands, Buffy's head sank down on the woman's lap.  
"But he killed so many people. So many innocent lives. Should I just forget those, forgive him?"  
  
"To forgive is an act of compassion my little one. It's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it."  
  
"Not to a foul thing like you it isn't."   
Buffy looked up at the form framing the doorway. She couldn't see the girls face, just that she was young and that she was firmly entrenched in the doorway, blocking out the light that flamed around her form, around the sword in her grip. Buffy tried to get up, to stop her, but it was as if an invisible force held her down, paralyzed. She could do nothing but watch as the stranger forced Kreviak down to the ground, kicking him down, the sword, no, a stake in his heart.  
  
A heart no longer beating.  
  
"Kreviak!"  
  
Something let go and Buffy fell to the ground. She crawled up to the demons fallen form, holding her hand out to it in a vague attempt at touch.  
  
"Why do you even care?"  
Buffy couldn't believe the others stupidity. How could she even ask? But her mouth seemed sewn together and her eyes felt unwilling to even face the Slayers look.  
  
"He was just a thing after all. A mindless, soulless fiend. He could not love, he could not care. It was nothing but a lie, for how could anything without a soul ever love anything but itself."  
  
It was then that Buffy could look up at her, at the other, at herself, and hit her across the room.  
The other just smirked, cruelly laughing at the pain she caused.  
"You're wrong. I'm wrong."  
She kept beating the other woman. The other looked at her, her face bruised and battered from Buffy's fists  
"Being a Slayer, being what I am ... It's not about killing. It's not about destroying ... "  
  
Buffy got back up, staring at her fists, at the blood on them. It wasn't the others blood, it wasn't her blood, somehow ... it was Spike's.  
  
"It can't be."  
  
The other Buffy stared at her, its face a strange mirror of Spike's after she'd beaten him up. After she'd ...  
  
"For if we do, we, I, are worse than the worst we face, because at least we had a choice."  
  
The other Buffy faded as the last echo of her words had twisted out of her. So did Elise, a smile on her old wrinkled face as she disappeared. Buffy kneeled back at Kreviaks body, allowing her tears to touch his limp form. She couldn't see, couldn't feel. And the body melted under her tears, changing form, changing into Spike's body. The stake was still in his heart, still stuck as in a killing blow, yet his body didn't dust, didn't leave her. She grabbed on to the wooden shaft, desperate to pull it out, to save him, to save Spike. But it wouldn't budge.  
  
"Please Spike. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please forgive me, please, I love you. Don't leave me, please forgive me."  
Her tears hissed as they fell down on the stake, biting in it, slowly eating at it like acid.  
  
She wiped of her tears with the back of her hand and looked at his face, wanting to see his eyes as his eyelids slowly opened.  
  
And then her eyes opened and she was lying on a bed, her own bed. Nicely tucked under.  
Spike sat next to the bed, holding her hand, holding on to her.  
  
"Spike."   
  
It was hard to speak, her mouth felt dry, but she needed to say something, there was something to say ...something.   
  
"Buffy?"   
  
She held on to his hand, unwilling to let him go, unwilling to loose him. He stared up bewildered, even more so as she pleaded for his forgiveness. Her words flowed as if they had a will of her own. Begging him, admitting her guilt. She'd done wrong. Please forgive me, don't hate me.  
  
He just pulled her close into his embrace, letting her mutter on. His lips touched her forehead, kissing her gently, lovingly.  
"Buffy."  
  
"I do love you Spike. Please can you ever forgive me."  
And he did, cause in the end, to be forgiven is not a prize earned. It's is first and foremost a compassion. And through it, one can find the greatest love of all.  
  
  
  
  
"It's better to burn out than to fade away."  
The Kurgan  
  
Xander: I need to say something to you. I should have said it a long time ago. I mean, you may not even know... I love you, Anya, more every day. I love the way you see things. I love the way you work a cash register and how beautiful you are - and how amazingly sweet and crazy you can be at the same time...I can't imagine my days without you - and I wouldn't want to.   
  
Spike to Dawn: "I've got things to do. Bad, evil things." (me: yeah right)  
  
Spike: GAAAH! WHAT THE BLEEDING HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU BLOODY WOMEN? WHAT THE HELL DOES IT TAKE? WHY DO YOU BITCHES TORTURE ME?  
Buffy: "Which question do you want me to answer first."  
  
Spike to Buffy: "I love you, you know that."


End file.
